Swart Donkey

I don’t think we’re ever really having the same conversation. It’s like sitting in a theatre watching the same play but from different sea...

I t is worth reading the book, “ How to win friends and influence people ” by Dale Carnegie. The name sounds terrible. I put off reading it ...

To outsource your decision-making, you need to develop trust. I like to believe in a world where we can have open conversations. The reality...

Projected confidence and imposed binaries. If, like me, you feel ill-equipped to make sense of the world… where do we start? There is no s...

If you have ever had a fight with someone you care deeply about, you will know that often the fight is not about the fight. Whenever you s...

You can’t expect someone to change their mind if their core belief is what sustains their livelihood and community. Max Planck said, “Scie...

One of my favourite essays to regularly reread is Scott Alexander’s “ I can tolerate anything except the outgroup ”. It reminds me of how ...

I don’t believe honesty is verbal. You can’t just vomit the truth. We aren’t always even conscious of our “truth”. We are all incredibly s...

A Contrarian is not someone who is contrary. If you are contrary, then all the “wisdom” is held in the view of the opposite position. You ...

I have approached approaches in one of two ways. Growing up, I was deeply involved in the Church.  I believed deeply that there was only o...

In George Orwell's Animal Farm, things start bad for the animals. The Revolution brings hope but things get awful fast. Everything is b...

I was pretty awful at banter as a little chap. I took myself, and life, very seriously. It is not that I didn't have a sense of humour...

What would a world beyond countries look like? Empires didn't build national stories around ethnic groupings. That is a more recent phe...

The Science I was trained to believe in has a clear concept of truth. Scientific Truth is not something you invent. It is something you ...

The world can't be moving towards Post-Truth if we have never had an agreement on what truth is. Kevin Vallier talks of the truce betw...

The suspension of disbelief allows us to enjoy the story. Stories are better with some leaps, gaps, and mysteries, that allow us to stretch...

The Debatable Right to Free Speech ( Human Rights Series Part 1)   The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article ...

Rich and I continue our discussion from Part 1 Trev: The 'idea of converting' is a useful link into answering your question on ...

There is a lot of talk around Safe Spaces at the moment, but two very different ideas of what that means. My understanding of the first way...

Defn: To Ooze 1. Closed to productive debate and discussion. Presumed intellectual and/or moral superiority. 2. Emotional outbursts mas...